35 research outputs found
Hamiltonicity and -hypergraphs
We define and study a special type of hypergraph. A -hypergraph ), where is a partition of , is an
-uniform hypergraph having vertices partitioned into classes of
vertices each. If the classes are denoted by , ,...,, then a
subset of of size is an edge if the partition of formed by
the non-zero cardinalities , ,
is . The non-empty intersections are called the parts
of , and denotes the number of parts. We consider various types
of cycles in hypergraphs such as Berge cycles and sharp cycles in which only
consecutive edges have a nonempty intersection. We show that most
-hypergraphs contain a Hamiltonian Berge cycle and that, for and , a -hypergraph always contains a sharp
Hamiltonian cycle. We also extend this result to -intersecting cycles
Generalisation : graphs and colourings
The interaction between practice and theory in mathematics is a central theme. Many mathematical structures and theories result from the formalisation of a real problem. Graph Theory is rich with such examples. The graph structure itself was formalised by Leonard Euler in the quest to solve the problem of the Bridges of Königsberg. Once a structure is formalised, and results are proven, the mathematician seeks to generalise. This can be considered as one of the main praxis in mathematics. The idea of generalisation will be illustrated through graph colouring. This idea also results from a classic problem, in which it was well known by topographers that four colours suffice to colour any map such that no countries sharing a border receive the same colour. The proof of this theorem eluded mathematicians for centuries and was proven in 1976. Generalisation of graphs to hypergraphs, and variations on the colouring theme will be discussed, as well as applications in other disciplines.peer-reviewe